first principal representative of the deep sea soundings is before us. In our prepared and mounted specimen it is the shell alone which we see; the delicate tenant has of course long since perished, and its beautiful envelope alone is left; turning to our tank of sea-water, however, we can soon, by dint of prying pretty closely among the weeds, secure a living individual for inspection, and placing it beneath the lens, we shall see, to quote a good naturalist and accurate observer: “From the sides of the opaque shell protruding tiny points of the clear sarcode; these gradually and slowly—so gradually and slowly that the eye cannot recognise the process of extension—stretch and extend their lines and films of delicate jelly, till at length they have stretched right across the field of view. These films are as irregular in their forms as the expansions of the sarcode of the Amœba, with which they have the closest affinity. Their only peculiarity is their tendency to run out into long ribbons or attenuated threads, which, however, coalesce and unite whenever they come into mutual contact, and thus we see the threads branching and anastomosing with the utmost irregularity, usually with broad triangular films at the point of divergence and union. There can be no doubt that the object of these lengthened films, which are termed ‘pseudopodia,’ is the capture of prey or food of some kind; perhaps the more sluggish forms of minute animalcules or the simpler plants. These, the films of sarcode probably entangle, surround, and drag into the chambers of the shell, digesting their softer parts in temporary vacuoles, and then casting out the more solid remains just as the Amœba does.” By means of these “pseudopodia” the animal also drags itself along over a fixed surface. Such is the Foraminifer of our own seas, and such too the atomies of the Atlantic basin. Of the Polycystinæ we shall find no living representatives in these latitudes, though even if we did, the above description would scarcely need to be altered to serve for them as well, save in so far as their shells or envelopes are concerned; these, as we have an opportunity of seeing, are of more various forms and more elegant design that those of their near relations, and it was in admiration of them the loudest exclamations and prettiest diminutives were applied by our bright-eyed investigators. And our third slip of glass, what shall we say of that? Its history is a somewhat more involved and complicated matter. Viewed with a high magnifying power several strange and beautiful forms are visible as composing the dust; there are little discs of purest glass reticulated like the engine-turned back of a watch, other discs similarly reticulated and fringed with projecting processes like the rowel of a spur; triangular forms of the most delicate net-work, and oval or square pieces of exquisite chasing or tracery—surely these must be shells. And shells they are truly, though these minute objects have never served as coverings for anything but vegetable matter; each lovely reticulated “valve,” siliceous in its nature and of indestructible hardness, has been the envelope of as true a plant as the tree or flower. Living representatives of each Atlantic species are known to us, nor if we take a casual glance at one of these under the microscope will it be a matter of surprise to anyone who sees it for the first time, to learn that ever since the first discovery of the great family of Diatomaceæ (a discovery almost contemporaneous with the introduction of the microscope), their true character and place in the kingdoms has been a subject of constant dispute. These little discs, while living, have not only the general appearance of some fantastic kind of shell, but are endowed with a very marked power of locomotion, which has, moreover, every semblance of being as much under the influence of volition as the movements of any of the infusorial animalcula; it is not then much to be wondered at that they should have been bandied about for years between the animal and vegetable dominions, as their respective affinities to either appeared to their observers to predominate; they are now (we think finally) referred to the latter kingdom, and take place with, or rather below, the lowest form of fungi, as the humblest types of that boundless and magnificent section of creation. Thus, then, we complete the examination of our treasures, and find that the depths of ocean are, like this green earth, peopled with living tenants and enriched with vegetable existences; widely different, perhaps, from the kinds we dreamed might lie in them; forms, without the newness, size, or gorgeousness that our fancy had prefigured, yet rightly fitted all to the work set them to do, and that work (doubt it not), little as we yet know of its extent or direction, one day to be disclosed as no mean or unworthy example of Nature’s slow, sure, yet stupendous doings. We replace our little slides in the cabinet, yet we cannot wholly leave them without lingering for a moment over this one imagination, fantastic though it may appear, to which they have given birth. These Diatoms and Polycystinæ, humblest forms of vitality, do yet seem, in those wonderful peculiarities of their coverings (which, until we had become acquainted with these lower organisms, were ever considered as exclusively typical of infinitely higher races of animals), to stretch out an almost prophetic finger, pointing from the sunless sea-floor, where the first faint glimmerings of the flame of life flickers through the darkness, to the coming time (distant, it may be, unnumbered ages) when a more perfected creation shall enter on the scene slowly preparing for its advent. And now does any reader ask, Have we not been pursuing an useless theme? Is there any practical result to be accomplished by these researches? At present, we confess, not much. The Atlantic cable, whose very existence is referable to the facts made known by deep-sea sounding is, as yet, a failure; still, let all observers work and wait; hasty men, with a contempt for scraps of information and thimblefuls of knowledge, will meanwhile do well to remember Franklin’s question, “What is the use of a new-born babe?” None can solve that unanswerable riddle, yet there is no one of us who doubts the possibilities that may be hidden in that germ of life.
This we believe to be true. No honest work was ever done, no careful effort ever made to get at one of Nature’s smallest secrets without some useful results following in due time. And so we